About SF4.0

The LOEWE project Software-Factory 4.0 (SF4.0) is funded by the German State of Hesse from 2018 until 2022. SF4.0 is concerned with the adaptation of legacy software due to changed requirements and technical advances. The project strives to achieve this adaptation in an automated fashion. The main focus is on three topics: more flexible software systems in the context of the application area "Industrie 4.0", the parallelization of existing software in the context of "High Performance Computing" (HPC), and simplification of the re-engineering in both areas.

The goal of "Software-Factory 4.0" is to enable legacy software systems as used for high performance computing and cyber-physical production systems to keep up with the rapid technological advances made in the development of new hardware and middleware platforms. Existing software must be retrofitted to fully exploit the potential provided by technological progress. Complete re-development of the existing stock of production software is infeasible. At the same time, superficially adapted legacy software prevents optimal hardware usage. This is known as the "software gap" in parallel computing.

SF4.0 aims to create methods and tools that enable continuous and largely automated re-engineering of software to meet changed requirements and technological constraints. Re-engineering keeps software development costs manageable and allows one to preserve expert domain knowledge inherent to legacy software.

The two main application areas that are explored in SF4.0 are "High Performance Computing" (HPC) and "Industrie 4.0". In the former, the main driving force is the parallelization of existing software, while in the latter, the main focus is the variability aspects of cyber-physical production systems and the development of digital twins.